Vegetarianism and testosterone levels

Kadongy

Research indicates that vegetarians have lower testosterone levels on average than omnivores. In fact this is even used in some places as an argument in favour of vegetarianism: "It makes you nicer", and some pretty dramatic descriptions of the unavoidable meateater's fate of having an enlarged prostate. Anyway I digress.

The lower testosterone phenomenon is interesting to me. From a nutritional POV, it appears to be the one of the only arguments in favour of omnivorism over vegetarianism. [The only other argument that I'm aware of is that omega 3s from animal sources are valuable.]

What I'm mainly interested in is whether a vegetarian diet per se causes lower testosterone levels, or whether vegetarians tend to have lower testosterone levels because of specific, easily addressed factors - low intake of saturated fat, low intake of minerals such as zinc and magnesium, low calorie diet in general, for examples..The literature seems quite inconclusive regarding this.

Any thoughts..?

Alopex

Kadongy wrote: »

What I'm mainly interested in is whether a vegetarian diet per se causes lower testosterone levels, or whether vegetarians tend to have lower testosterone levels because of specific, easily addressed factors - low intake of saturated fat, low intake of minerals such as zinc and magnesium, low calorie diet in general, for examples..The literature seems quite inconclusive regarding this.

Any thoughts..?

I don't really see how to differentiate the two.

Would it not just be argued a vegetarian diet causes lower testosterone per say due to it containing less saturated and the other diets?

What I'm trying to say is that's the main physical difference between veggie and normal diets from the body's point of view.

Peanut

I wouldn't necessarily agree that vegetarianism leads to significantly lower saturated fat and calorie intake, but I would guess that vegans on average would consume less saturated fat than vegetarians due to avoiding dairy produce.

OP I would double check whether the sources you looked at distinguished between veganism and vegetarianism correctly as there is often confusion with the terms, especially in the US.

Kadongy

Alopex wrote: »

I don't really see how to differentiate the two.

Would it not just be argued a vegetarian diet causes lower testosterone per say due to it containing less saturated and the other diets?

What I'm trying to say is that's the main physical difference between veggie and normal diets from the body's point of view.

Not necessarily. A vegetarian diet isn't low in saturated fat by definition or anything. Eggs, dairy and nuts all have high levels - as do crisps, chips and chocolate...

Peanut wrote: »

I wouldn't necessarily agree that vegetarianism leads to significantly lower saturated fat and calorie intake, but I would guess that vegans on average would consume less saturated fat than vegetarians due to avoiding dairy produce.

OP I would double check whether the sources you looked at distinguished between veganism and vegetarianism correctly as there is often confusion with the terms, especially in the US.

These are good points, and I will check that.

On reflection I see two possibilites:

1. The lower average levels are due to lower average intake of certain nutrients [whether or not due to the inclusion of vegans]. This could be avoided easily by eating the right food.

2. The lower levels are caused by the avoidance of hormones in meat. Unless your politics are pro-steroids, this should probably be seen as a good thing...and even if you are, copious consumption of milk would probably achieve the same effect.

seamus

There's also the obvious possibility that this is correlation and not causation and the diet is irrelevant to testosterone levels.

That is, that people with a lower level of testosterone are more likely to be vegetarian than those with higher levels. This would account for the gender biase towards women in vegetarianism.

Do you have any links to this research?

Kadongy

seamus wrote: »

There's also the obvious possibility that this is correlation and not causation and the diet is irrelevant to testosterone levels.

That is, that people with a lower level of testosterone are more likely to be vegetarian than those with higher levels. This would account for the gender biase towards women in vegetarianism.

Do you have any links to this research?

I'll put up links later.

It dealt with men only - I should have stated that.

I think it took correlation into acocunt also - as in it took samples and imposed the diets on them, rather than choosing people who selected to be vegetarian.

Kadongy

http://www.ajcn.org/content/70/3/525S.full

This study compares vegan and omnivore testosterone levels. It is interesting that vegans had the same level of testosterone, but significantly higher Sex hormone-binding globulin, which inhibits the function of testosterone. SHBG is decreased by high level of insulin and IGF-1. Milk is a major source of IGF-1, so the absence of dairy from the diet would this would be a reasonable explanation for this.


There seems to be a lot of literature on this. This isn't one of the studies I read about first. I'll expand this post later..